was a Japanese poet,

film critic Film criticism is the analysis and evaluation of films and the film medium. In general, film criticism can be divided into two categories: journalistic criticism that appears regularly in newspapers, magazines and other popular mass-media outl ...

, and

film theorist Film theory is a set of scholarly approaches within the academic discipline of film or cinema studies that began in the 1920s by questioning the formal essential attributes of motion pictures; and that now provides conceptual frameworks for unde ...

Career

Born the son of a wealthy engineer in Fukushima Prefecture, Sugiyama studied art history at the

University of Tokyo , abbreviated as or UTokyo, is a public research university located in Bunkyō, Tokyo, Japan. Established in 1877, the university was the first Imperial University and is currently a Top Type university of the Top Global University Project b ...

, and it was at that time that he was discovered by the poet

Tatsuji Miyoshi was a Japanese poet, literary critic, and literary editor active during the Shōwa period of Japan. He is known for his lengthy free verse poetry, which often portray loneliness and isolation as part of contemporary life, but which are written ...

. After graduating, he founded the literary journal ''Osaka bungaku'' with

Sakunosuke Oda was a Japanese writer. He is often grouped together with Osamu Dazai and Ango Sakaguchi as the '' Buraiha.'' Literally meaning ruffian or hoodlum faction, this label was not a matter of a stylistic school but one bestowed upon them by conservati ...

. He won the Nakahara Chuya Prize in 1941 and the Bungei Panron Prize in 1943 for his poetry. His father's factory, however, burned down during World War II and Sugiyama had to give up his creative activities in order to rebuild the family business, an endeavor that ended in failure in 1956 when the company had to declare bankruptcy after a series of labor conflicts and natural disasters. It took him 24 years to publish his second book of poetry. His poetry has been termed "short and crisp, witty, more visual than musical, philosophical and even metaphysical – without losing touch with day-to-day reality." He won the Gendai Shijin Award at age 97 in March 2012, two months before his death of pneumonia. It was said that Sugiyama "spent his life between cinema and poetry". His poetry revealed "the eye of a cinematographer" and his first book, published in 1941, was on film. As a film theorist, he praised the

long take In filmmaking, a long take (also called a continuous take or continuous shot) is a shot with a duration much longer than the conventional editing pace either of the film itself or of films in general. Significant camera movement and elaborate bl ...

and critiqued film montage before

André Bazin André Bazin (; 18 April 1918 – 11 November 1958) was a renowned and influential French film critic and film theorist. Bazin started to write about film in 1943 and was a co-founder of the renowned film magazine ''Cahiers du cinéma'' in 1951, ...

did. From 1966, he was a professor at

Tezukayama Gakuin College Tezukayama may refer to: *Tezukayama Station, a railway station in Osaka, Japan *Tezukayama University, a university in Nara, Japan *Tezukayama Gakuin University, a university in Osaka Prefecture, Japan {{disambiguation ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Sugiyama, Heiichi 1914 births 2012 deaths 20th-century Japanese poets Japanese film critics Film theorists Writers from Fukushima Prefecture University of Tokyo alumni